VEINS CLOSED FOR RECONSTRUCTION. USE ALTERNATE ROUTE.

"What is it to be a nice guy? to be nothing, that's what. a big fat zero with a big smile for everybody." Kirk Douglas said that. but i'll bet you thought it was me. i almost did.

i'm in a no-more-mister-nice-guy mood today. but i got tired of being everyones pick-me-upper AGES ago. what a drain. to act like 'happy-Sandy' for everybody else's benefit is the worst form of self-betrayal imaginable. Judas'ing yourself to yourself.

how low does one's self-opinion have to be when one denies one's own state of mind for the benefit of everyone else? like there's only one dimension to your personality. with all the depth of a paper doll. not having the courage to BE how you REALLY feel, just in case people found YOU draining, which they probably WOULD because nobody likes a downer.

but what is it to be a drain? i'm going to tell you exactly what it is. coming from somebody who has BEEN drained. REPEATEDLY. for VARIOUS aspects of herself. i guess it was worth being sucked dry because now i can really appreciate and enjoy the left-overs: my rudeness, intolerance and bitterness. my 'Happy Sandy' costume eventually wore SO THREADBARE that i had no choice really when i threw it away. or it disintegrated. i can't remember which.

i'm recalling a night when i was working at Hunt Lascaris and a bunch of us went out for dinner after work to wind down. at that time i had one of my brother and David's fishing friends, Craig fall head over heels in fascination with me. Craig was a conservative, naive, re-born Christian pastor nerd who'd had sex with only ONE WOMAN in his 30 years of human life. the hardest drug he'd encountered was bioplus, because he believed in 'faith healing', and the most obscene language he used was 'darn'. he was adamantly, uncatagorically, vehemently AGAINST, but at the same time curious, about the wilder side of the wild side of life.

Craig took one look at me, the HEAD GAME RANGER of Wildness, sitting at David's desk and sprinted off to my brother pleading 'Brad, before i die i HAVE to have a girl EXACTLY LIKE THAT!'. the guys were like 'shjaa! whatever Craig, now run along to Bible study'. but he persisted, and one dire stormy night my brother called me and told me to come to Dad's restaurant because he 'missed me'. i was higher than the International Space Station at the time but i drove through the rain anyway to get to him.

however, when i got to The Grillhouse i saw my brother was NOT in fact alone and sad AFTER all. he was sitting there with Craig. he'd set me up. little shit! i was angry. so i made up my mind right then that i was going to scare this guy into his next life for wasting my time. and, out of spite, i proceeded to behave like Sid Vicious on the last leg of a Sex Pistols world tour.

i think even Sid would've been unsettled by my behavior that night.

so, you're asking, shocking and outrageous as i was, did i put him off? uh uh. i just intrigued him MORE and, to cut a long story short, today Craig's a cocaine addict who's been in and out of jail and rehab as often as i go in and out of the gym's turnstiles, and he has a child with a heroin addict who he met along the way.

ugh! what a novice. that much is clear. as clear as my conscience in fact.

here's my theory on people who are in two minds about what they WANT to do and what they SHOULD do: if you want to leap over an abyss, don't take two steps. you'll land up humming and ha-ing your way down the rock-face to a messy death for everyone to shake their heads and 'tsk tsk' at. that's if the humiliation doesn't kill you before you hit the bottom. if you want to derail just shut up, get on with it and do it. people will respect you more for it.

don't you think? you cannot stand holding a Bible in your right hand and a rolled up hundred buck note in your left. that's like standing with one foot on the edge of the pool and the other on a lilo floating on the water. you can end up in only one place - the pool.

Craig sank straight to the bottom and drowned. amateur.

but back to the Hunt-Lascaris dinner. there we all sat like little rock-stars applauding our own greatness when along came Craig. he'd tracked me down and wanted to SURPRISE me.

he surprised me. to the point of a near seizure.

i felt my blood drain into my Wizards boots. Craig was simply too uncool for this group to stomach. and he was about to get swallowed whole and spat out before he'd cast his opening sentence. however, he was so transfixed by ME that he didn't seem to notice all of them mouthing silent exclamations like 'who the hell is THIS dork?!' at me. my toes were SO TIGHTLY CURLED UP in my designer boots i could hear the leather straining under the pressure. i think Prince Charles was less embarrassed when his 'my-little-tampon' sms's to Camilla Parker-Bowles were published. of course THAT'S because HE had a coolness factor of ZERO on a scale of ONE to INFINITY to protect.

finally Sam took her infamous 'super-brave/throw-all-caution-to-the-wind' sip of wine. holding her back after THAT was harder than trying to hold back a stampeding horse with its tail on fire. she'd had just about all she could bare looking at this man-sized Paris Hilton puppy gazing into my face and she decided to put his tongue back in his mouth for him and send him yelping on his way.

she said: "excuse me but who exactly ARE you? and why are you hanging around Sandy?! wait! don't answer that, I'LL tell you why. because you're a total nerd THAT'S why! and you've come to PARASITE off Sandy's COOLNESS. a COOL-PARASITE, THAT'S what you are! now let me inform you, whoever you are, that Sandy has worked long and hard to achieve her level of coolness, and YOU come along thinking that by just BEING with her you'll automatically be granted the same coolness! well it doesn't work like that i'm afraid to inform you. go away, get your OWN coolness THEN come back and see if you can be with Sandy." she ended with a MASSIVE eye-roll and took another sip of red.

we all sat there stunned. not a soul could add a single word because what she'd said was flawless. that diatribe could not have been improved upon by Shakespeare. wow.

but coolness is not the only aspect of me that's been vampired i'm afraid. my happiness, my energy, my generosity and even my SADNESS and mental health have been extracted from my jugular by other people. that's right. that's what i said. there are some twisted people out there who are only there for me when i'm in trouble. probably because they get a high from seeing me low. i know this because those same people try their level best to break me down and put me in my place when i'm fine. sadly for them my 'place' happens to be an apartment on the beach with a view so panoramic you can almost see the curvature of the globe. THAT's MY PLACE.

and that's where i'd rather stay just to keep my blood in my veins. where it belongs.

and everbody's like, "but that's not YOU Sandy". oh REALLY. what IS 'me' exactly? i'll tell you what everyone's idea of me is. i am a person who's neck people want to sink their fangs into, extract whatever part they enjoy, and spit out the rest. THAT'S who i am to them. who am i really? only i know who i am. although everybody knows me, there are very few people who actually KNOW me. or would WANT to for that matter because that's just about too much reality for anyone to handle.

'sanity calms. but madness is more interesting'. John Russell said that. i say SORRY GUY, go get your OWN madness and entertain YOURSELF. THIS slightly left-of-centre girl's lost interest in being interesting. whoever wants to suck my life-blood, sorry for you, these sluice-gates are SHUT until further notice.

so, if i'm not acting like 'Sandy', i actually am but never had the courage to show it. and if you don't like what you see, move along, i promise i won't miss you. this, i'm afraid, is as good as it gets. and if you still want to go out with me, just to test if i mean what i've just said, sorry but this week's out. can we reschedule for never? how about never? is never good for you? come pick me up at around say, i dunno how's FOREVER o'clock?

i'm not here to win a popularity contest. i won lots of those ages ago. wearing the wrong personality and too much stage make-up. sounds like a waste but at least the experience helped me to define who should be dubbed 'Unforgiven' by me. but aren't. because they're not worthy of a shred of my emotions.

"i don't care if people hate my guts; i assume most of them do. the important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it." William Burroughs said that. but i'll bet you thought it was me. i sure as hell did.